A 30-year-old man has been arrested and formally charged with the “commission of the crimes of discrimination and incitement to hatred and violence, public incitement to homicide, public endorsement of a crime, unlawful recordings and possession of a prohibited weapon”, after allegedly sharing a social media post urging violence against a group of foreign nationals, in this case, Brazilians.
The charges were made public this Friday, 27th February, by the Judiciary Police (PJ) in a statement seen by journalists.
The suspect was remanded in custody at the time of his arrest, in what authorities describe as an unprecedented case. According to investigators, he had published posts on social media offering, as a reward, a flat in central Lisbon to anyone who carried out a massacre targeting Brazilians. He also allegedly offered €100,000 to anyone who attempted to take “the life of a Brazilian journalist working in Portugal”.
The journalist in question is Stefani Costa, who had reportedly received threatening images months earlier of Bruno Silva holding firearms. She filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and proceedings are under way at the Lisbon Department of Investigation and Criminal Prosecution (DIAP).
The investigation that led to the indictment was conducted by the PJ’s National Counter-Terrorism Unit. The post that triggered the arrest quickly went viral, causing widespread alarm and significant public concern.
“In addition to having prior police records for crimes of discrimination and incitement to hatred and violence, and possessing advanced knowledge in the field of digital security, the defendant was found in possession of extensive evidential material, including a substantial body of digital evidence relating to his ideological radicalism,” the statement reads.
The PJ further stressed that it maintains continuous and systematic efforts “to detect, prevent and combat so-called hate crimes” in order to safeguard public security.
Source: DN
